The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has dismissed the plea of an architecture course aspirant who sought a direction to the National Testing Agency (NTA) to display the provisional answer key for Drawing Part III paper of B. Arch admission conducted for JEE (Main) examination, April 2020.
The petitioner, T. Kavinraj, said Drawing Part III paper examination was conducted in ‘pen and paper’ offline mode to be attempted on a drawing sheet to test the drawing aptitude of candidates, for which there was no answer key. He sought display of the answer key so that if candidates were not satisfied with it, they could challenge it.
The NTA submitted that for the subjective paper no answer key was provided and there could not be allotment of partial marks for every stage of drawing. The answer sheets were assessed by two independent subject experts and if their assessment differed by more than 25 % it was placed for scrutiny before a head expert.
If the difference between the marks given by the two experts was less than 25%, then the average was taken. The process of dual verification was followed in order to curb the possibility of incorrect assessment and prepare the result in a fair and transparent manner. The petitioner was aware of this system of conduct of the examination, it was submitted.
Justice S. Vaidyanathan observed that the common test was conducted throughout India and for Drawing Part III, which was a subjective paper, there was no need to award marks in stages and to upload the key answers in the website. Except wishing the candidate ‘All the Best’ to come out with flying colours in the forthcoming examinations, the court said, it could not grant relief to him.
